Rally Point Qualifier AAR--Lenexa, KS

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Yesterday I had the great opportunity to play in my first Rally Point Qualifier tournament, and my second Legion tournament, at Collector's Cache in Lenexa, KS. It was a bit of a drive from Manhattan, KS, (about two hours) but was the first one of the year within a reasonable range. Ultimately, I ended up going 3/0, and taking first place in the tournament.

Part I, Pre-Game

I will admit to being a bit of a contrarian, and often try to go my own way in list building. I can't really stand the current sniper meta, and while I wish they were better, I love E-Webs. But, at the same time, I also know that sometimes, the meta is there for a reason. As such, my list was a compromise between the existing meta and my playstyle:

Up until I was at the store, I was also debating running a different list with Deathtroopers instead of Boba and the Snipers, but after seeing the initial tables, realized snipers were going to be brutal. Upon arrival, the store had several tables out, but all of them were on felt rather than mats, and were very, very sparse on terrain. They realized the problem with this, and were working on improving things before we had arrived. Since I brought a great deal of my terrain, I helped another player from Manhattan set up a couple of tables, and in the end, things were much improved. (though a few tables were still very, very light on cover/terrain in my opinion.

People who follow my terrain threads will likely recognize that the desert town mat above was completely made up of my terrain, and I contributed some terrain to the second to the last mat above on my brand new Fifth Trooper Podcast "Mud planet" mat. I'd say the forest and lava maps were by far the biggest offenders on the absence of terrain. I never ended up playing on the lava mat, but several people who came over from Manhattan who did said it was pretty ridiculous when you faced certain units. (the Occupier being the biggest offender) because they had range for days, and there was nowhere near enough terrain to try and outflank. I did play on the forest map, and while as bad, properly situated snipers could pretty much hit anywhere on the map, unless a tree just happened to be at the right angle. The desert junkyard was almost as bad about this, but fortunately, the AT-AT wreck and the shield generator provided a little bit of cover/LOS blocker for a fair number of units.

Tournament wise, we had a pretty fair turnout with 13 players. Not X-Wing size, of course, but bigger than other Legion or Armada tournaments I've been to. The tournament was divided into three rounds of swiss, with the top two being matched for a final game. (this didn't happen, but I will explain later)

The objective was "recover the supplies", and I believe our deployment was "Major Offensive". I split my main force up into two parts, with the majority of it in what we started calling "murder canyon," and Boba and a few squads on the other side of the map.

Game on deployment

I got a lucky hit on Kris's Boba early on, and that really kept him from being a major player in the game, while my Boba proceeded to take out both the saboteur strike team, and the generic officer, earning my first victory point. Meanwhile, "murder canyon" was earning its name in a slugging match between three squads of my Stormtroopers and an E-Web vs 2 squads of his, two squads of bikes, Veer's Maximum Firepower, and his Boba (before I was able to take him down). Honestly, this is where the game really was decided, as my defense die were on point, and no matter how good his rolls were, I don't think Kris was ever able to take more than four Stormtroopers off the table at any one time. This soaked up a ton of activations and prevented him from grabbing more than a single box of supplies. I pecked away at the squad with that box, and eventually wiped them out, and picked up a box of my own before we called it due to time. Win was 2 VPs to 0, with the points loss also likely being in my favor.

Hobbyist Awards:

After the first game, we got our rewards for the best-painted army, best-painted support unit, and best-painted operative. I had submitted Boba for the Operative, and one of my E-Webs (with Kitbashed stormtroopers manning it) for best support. Ultimately, Best Painted Operative went to a fellow Manhattanite, and I won best-painted Support. The best-painted army award was a bit funnier, as another Manhattanite took first.... with an army I had painted for him. Whoops. I ended up taking second in the Army category, so it sounds like my painting skills, or lack thereof, were appreciated.

He won our chance cube roll to be blue player, and we ended up playing Breakthrough with battlelines and Minefield. Man, oh man, did those mines suck. I think Rick took one crit to one of his AT-RTs, but both mines I set off rolled surges, and hit both Boba and one of my E-Webs twice. Each took three wounds, which meant I was playing Boba very, very conservatively the entire game. Leia's orbital bombardment also didn't help, doing two wounds to a stormtrooper unit, one to an E-Web, and one to my snipers, who were then promptly taken out by one of his sniper teams. Adding insult to injury, I had forgotten to declare Boba's bounty, before we started the game (we were still on one of the first activations when I remembered it) and Rick denied my request to place it then. While frustrating, I perfectly understand his reasoning, and I have no one to blame but myself. The joys of playing a unit you're not used to using.

The opening rounds weren't all bad for me, however, as I was able to focus fire DLT-19s and Boba's rockets against the AT-RTs, and take both of them down by the middle of round two. Range four fire became the name of the game as Rick started pushing up at me in the center, and I tried skirting around the sides. He got a little too pushy with Leia, and got her within range 2 of Boba, while wounded, who proceeded to use his free aim from Hunter to get several crits through her and Chewie's Guardian. Han was also wounded, but he kept dropping stormtroopers. One of my E-Webs soaked up a lot of fire, but ultimately folded, while the other one never made a shot the entire game. I would have liked to use Boba more, but having wounded myself with the minefield and forgetting about emergency stims, I didn't want to risk him. The game ended with him having one health point left, and Han and him having a show down. Theoretically, Boba could have taken Han out the next turn if I remembered Emergency stims, but who knows. Ultimately, it all came down to the last activation for both of us. Rick's attempt to score fell short by millimeters. I pushed a two-man Stormtrooper squad into his deployment zone, and he had to move one of his snipers into a position to get the hit. He rolled a single crit, which, while killing the DLT gunner, didn't wipe out the unit, and allowed me to get the game-winning VP as our game ended due to time. Talk about a close one.

End of the game pictures:

And the game winner, the SGT York of stormtroopers, waving at the Rebels snipers that almost tied the game.

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After barely squeaking through round 2, I was more than happy with how the day was going for me. No matter the outcome, I had an overall winning record, and had, had fun. While I still very much wanted to win, I was just content to play at this point. (a lack of lunch and a bad knee from standing around probably contributed to that as well) My opponent this round was Josh, and his rebel list.

Commands:
Son of Skywalker, Sorry About the Mess, My Ally Is the Force, Reckless Diversion, Notorious Scoundrels, Change of Plans, Standing Orders,

We were playing on the relatively open forest map, so his snipers had a distinct advantage. Thankfully, we played Intercept the transmissions with Advanced Positions, so my units were able to rapidly close some of the gap, and somewhat nullify this advantage. My deployment zone had a nice crater terrain piece, and we had decided to treat it like a trench, (difficult terrain to move through, provides heavy cover for units inside, but light cover for units shooting across it). I started the game by pushing one of my E-Webs into the crater, and one of my stormtrooper squads towards the center objective.

I actually got both of my E-Webs activated pretty early on, and got them in range and on "stand by." this caused Josh a few problems since he didn't want to walk guys into the open sights of a Space Maxim, so he was a bit delayed in actually going for the objective. When he did, however, he did so with Luke running and gunning. Boba decided he needed to really notch things up after last game, and proceeded to be my MVP, killing at least two sniper teams by himself, and contributing to several other teams as well. I had (again) forgotten to paly his bounty, but Josh insisted it wasn't a problem, and I put it on Han. (seemed suitably thematic) the second turn led with Luke and "Son of Skywalker" being played, pretty shortly shocktrooper body parts were flying everywhere, and I was left with just the Officer upgrade left in the unit. Following the advice of Brave Sir Robin, she bravely ran away, and let everyone else within range open up on Luke. He blocked more than his fair share of hits, but eventually went down to the massed firepower. Han tried to cover the slack, but he started taking hits as well, and Chewie got a face full of E-Web for his trouble. I saw an opportunity after killing Josh's second sniper team, and pushed Boba up, and took out a squad of troopers with the flame thrower, and also scored a few hits on Han at the same time. Chewie finally lost his staring contest with the Space Maxim, but triggered emergency stims before going down. He charged into Boba, and landed a few hits on him before succumbing to his wounds. (and I imagine his pelt is now being worn by Boba) The game finally ended (due to time) when we completed round four, and Josh was left with a single squad of troopers, a sniper team, and Han at no health (having used emergency stims) All in all, I have to say Josh was great to play against, and unusual for a tournament game, felt fun and low pressure. We helped and reminded each other about certain things (Bounty, as mentioned before, but also with Han's defensive die rerolls and Force push on Luke)

Post Game:

Well, the end of the game ended up being the end of the tournament. My top two opponent Cody, decided to concede as soon as they announced the pairing. I'm assuming he was just as tired as I was by this point, though his first round was a Bye, so maybe not. Either way, it would have been an interesting game, as his list was quite unique.

It certainly would have been an interesting match up. Between Boba and the DLTs, I had enough Impact to take down the Tanks, but the question would have been whether or not Cody would have been deleting Stormtrooper squads while I was wailing on the tank. Also probably depends on the map we played on. If it had been the desert town or another terrain rich table, the odds would have been in my favor. Still, his performance does show a possible shift in the meta, with vehicles being more than capable of wrecking shop if needed, and perhaps the red defense die on the tanks would have been as active as mine were during round one. Alas, we'll never know.

In the end, I was declared the victor, got the trophy, and the Invitational invite. Not entirely sure what to do with it now, but oh well. At least the trophy has found a nice spot in my Imperial Shrine.

Final Thoughts
I think the tournament went well. The event staff were quick to answer questions or resolve disputes, and while everyone was competitive, I didn't see anyone have any jerk-y moments towards their fellow players. The sniper meta is still alive and well, unfortunately, and I stand by that being the case as much to do with the relative sparseness of terrain as to the actual benefits of sniper strike teams. (price, pierce, etc) I do wish tables were set up so that they wouldn't be so open as to allow almost total coverage by a pair of sniper teams, let alone a single one. I had a great time, and hope everyone else did too. If I made any mistakes in here in my retelling, or have forgotten anything important, I apologize for the error.